Thanks to Christ Church Clifton Primary School, we had an amazing day yesterday studying birds. We spotted both a Great Tit’s and a Blue Tit’s nest, learnt the names of many new garden birds and enjoyed taking part in lots of practical activities. It was truly awesome. 🐦🕊🦆🦅
Check out this video of the really helpful and industrious year six children at St Saviour’s Schools in Bath. We are very impressed with their work yesterday.
Dear Followers
In response to the latest government guidelines on COVID19, we have taken the decision to postpone all birthday parties and any community based projects in March and April. This may need to be extended; but we will review the situation later in the spring. Many businesses and organisations have interpreted the advice in different ways, but for us, we feel these activities are certainly unnecessary social gatherings. We know this is a disappointing outcome (especially for excited children) but the health and safety of our customers is the most important thing at this time.
At present we are continuing with our school based work and making plans on a day to day basis in response to the situation. A number of schools have asked if we are available to support with their emergency cover as a result of members of staff needing to self-isolate. This is certainly something we are offering; so do consider this if you are in an educational setting.
These are unprecedented times, but normality will return. Our beautiful woodlands will still be there at the end of all this, waiting for our joyous social gatherings!
In the meantime, rembember, if you’re self-isolating and feeling well enough, a walk in the woods is beneficial on so many levels – just keep your distance from others.
Tim and Jane 🙂
It has been Well-Being Week at St Saviour’s Schools in Bath this week, so we started our session talking about the benefits of spending time in the great outdoors. We followed this with some personal quiet time and focused on our sense of hearing, sight, touch and smell. All very relaxing!
Our main focus today was to create a woodland character/puppet using clay and scavenged materials. Some of the results were awesome. The children then put on plays together and shared them with the class.
Our Forest School Club engaged in some tool time, including whittling and some more saw and axe work.
Lots of signs of spring also; we spotted primrose, lords and ladies, hazel catkins and of course, daffodils!
Have a great holiday everyone and see you next term! 😁
So today marks the end of the calendar year here at SG Forest School and Outdoor Learning. This means it is time to compile our top nine Instagram posts of 2019. You can see these in the image below. If you are not following us on Instagram, why not join us in 2020.
http://www.instagram.com/sg_forest_school
Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year.
You may remember that last week some children from St Stephen’s Junior School decided they would like to make a new mallet. Well this week they did just that. Today they learnt to use a saw safely and then used their axe skills to finish the job.
They were certainly pleased with the results. The children also made some lovely Christmas decorations, some of which involved problem solving, as they threaded them with twine to create a star pattern.
Happy Christmas St Stephen’s and we’ll see you in the New Year.
The case study for the Bristol Standard that Christ Church Clifton Pre-School recently completed, is now available on the Bristol Early Years website. Supporting this project was an absolute highlight for us this year. Check it out; you might find some familiar faces amongst the photos!
Do it! Just do it! Just start! A Bristol Standard case study by Christchurch Clifton Pre-School
Use the clay we said; it’s fabulous to see what children can do when they’re given no boundaries. 😁
Our work at St Stephen’s Junior School in Soundwell continues and it’s great to see the children warming to the Forest School philosophy and exploring their own learning. A group of children in this session are passionate about axe work and choose it every week. But with practice comes skill and now their inquisitive nature has led them to the conclusion that they can make something. Seeing that the mallet has seen better days they have asked if they can make one from the tree trunk they found in the woods. So this week we will need to dig out both the saw and the axe!
Well done to all those brave children, parents and carers from Christ Church Clifton Pre-School who headed out into the woods even after a heavy rainfall forecast!
Despite this we had an awesome time and we don’t think the children even noticed. They made two fabulous autumn wreaths from the beech leaves, woodland sparklers and warm snacks on the fire. You’ve definitely earned a cosy evening in!
The autumn colours have certainly reached a peak this week and are putting on a fabulous show. We took the Year 3s from St Saviour’s Junior School in Bath to their Willow Garden where a beautiful mature sycamore is shedding it’s leaves.
The leaves became the inspiration for our session and we created stunning autumn wreaths and made leaf people in groups.
Our lunchtime group is growing in confidence, choosing their own activities and taking care of refreshments. It’s great to be back after the break!
We’ve had the most wonderful day at St Saviour’s Schools in Bath. Last week we focused on the autumn colours and this week we took our work to the next level.
The children collaborated in small groups to create amazing pieces of colour inspired art. We first looked at some examples created by Andrew Goldsworthy.
We also discussed bonfire night and what that meant to this country. We were then inspired to make our woodland sparklers. I’m sure the whole neighbourhood saw us walking back to school with these!
In our lunchtime club we had not one, but two birthdays to celebrate; so there was a surprise bit of birthday cake with candles!
We then made bread on the fire as the children had decided they would like to do this to mark the end of term.
We couldn’t of wished for better effects for our Stone Age Experience with Stoke Bishop Primary School today – somebody must have ordered in the smoke machine and fabulous lighting. Thank you for all the wonderful comments on the way our of the woods; particularly those children who said it was the best school trip they’d ever been on! Smiles all round. 😁
We had a wonderful Forest School session at St Stephen’s Junior School in Soundwell today. We got really creative with the autumn colours that we found and made a beautiful piece of 3D art.
Next week the children are going to have a fire and cook some bread, so we helped the children prepare cookiing sticks.
They took to whittling very quickly. We also made up some fabulous songs and sang them around our art work.
Today was all about autumn colours at St Saviour’s Junior School in Bath. We had a fabulous time collecting natural colours around the woodland and creating an amazing colour wheel.
The children then discussed the colours in our fire and we shared a song or two on the subject (and then one about a crazy moose)!
Our Forest School Club moved on to whittling skills this week and we were impressed with their attention to detail. Great effort team!
The children are really getting into routine with our Forest School sessions at St Stephen’s Junior School in Soundwell. They’ve become expert shelter builders and can get us out of the rain in minutes! We enjoyed craft work and a story with hot chocolate today.
The best day ever at Mountain School with Christ Church Clifton Pre-School. We embraced the challenge of climbing up Sand Point, took a sneaky visit to the beach for lunch and enjoyed taking in the marvellous views.
On top of our mountain we drew field sketches and thought carefully about what we could see. Stood on top of the trig point the children informed us that they could see everything!
What an awesome summer we’ve had with this wonderful group of children. We’ve all learnt so much about the world around us and at the same time had an absolute blast! Till next time – we miss you guys already!
So today we went out with the wonderful staff and children of Christ Church Clifton Pre-School to take part in River School! We found out about meanders, completed a kick sample, built a dam, crossed a swamp using ropes and had a wonderful lunch break in the meadow. We saw so many wonderful plants, flowers and butterflies. It certainly was a real treat; no doubt the children went home with some amazing stories. What were their favourite experiences parents/carers? 😀
We had a wonderful evening with the Year 3 children of Victoria Park Primary School, learning about the Stone Age. Some awesome cave painting and we even managed to sneak in on the hot chocolate around the fire!
Back to the beach today for another wonderful session with our friends from Christ Church Clifton Pre-School.
We thoroughly enjoyed watching all the boats go up and down the channel, so we decided to make our own boat out of drift wood and seaweed.
It was also a lot of fun running from the swell of the big boats, when it reached the shore. We also launched our own dinghy and gave Lobby the lobster a ride on the surf!
Sadly he fell in twice and got a bit of a soaking, but he didn’t seem to mind.
This weekend we are off to the Forest of Dean with this special group, for a Forest School camp out and we simply can’t wait – see you in the woods gang!
The Duchess of Cambridge has unveiled her Chelsea garden this week and we think she would be delighted to see that the children of Christ Church Clifton Pre-School visited their own woodland playground today!
As the Duchess quite rightly points out, participating in such activity is essential for both physical and mental wellbeing. The children were focusing, amongst other things, on cooking today. They collected nettles to make nettle tea and also cooked some marvellous damper bread.
There was so much to learn from the woodland and we’re pretty convinced that the children believe it to be the best playground ever!
#chelsea #chelseaflowershow #duchessofcambridge #woodlandplayground
Spent an awesome day on the beach with the staff and children from Christ Church Clifton Pre-School.
So many things to see today from container ships, aeroplanes and helicopters, to natural treats including crabs, sea scud and bladderwrack seaweed.
We also enjoyed recreating Denny Island, with rocks and seaweed, then homing our friendly sea creatures.
Really pleased to be back out with our friends at Christ Church Clifton Pre-School It was back to the coast for Beach School! Fantastic day exploring the beach, learning and at the same time having so much fun. Looking forward to sharing more sessions with you over the summer; we’ve got some real adventures up our sleeve!
Wow! The blossom was pretty special at our Forest School session at St Saviour’s Junior School in Bath today. We had a lot of fun with that. One particular child did some awesome maths…… yes maths! Equivalent fraction log chopping!!!! I bet he won’t forget that in a hurry.
We worked with a delightful group of children from St Saviour’s Junior School in Bath today. They thoroughly enjoyed getting out and embracing the April showers.
We had all sorts of things going on, from chopping wood, boiling water, various craft skills, wide games and of course, shelters to protect us from the occasional down pour!
Have a fabulous Easter break and we’ll see you next term.
We had another wonderful day at St Saviour’s in Bath, with the weather being particularly kind to us. The children thoroughly enjoyed getting to grips with fire steels and even cooked up some worm (catkins) treats to eat in their shelter. It was our last club session before Easter and the perfect excuse for an egg hunt!
Happy Birthday Isla we really enjoyed spending time in the woods with you and your friends. Enjoy the rest of the celebrations!
Lots of new skills learnt during our Forest School Sessions at St Saviour Junior School in Bath today. We particularly enjoyed developing a range of tool skills and putting up our new double hammocks!
During our Forest School sessions at St Saviours Junior School Bath on Thursday, we got creative with clay and produced some wonderful woodland guardians. We also learnt how to whittle using a bushcraft knife during after school club. We are looking forward to beginning our work with Year four next week.
We had a wonderful day in Gloucester at Harewood Junior School, leading our ever popular Stone Age Experience workshop. This was our fourth visit to the school in four years, which means all the children in the school have now worked with us. We would just like to say you are all delightful – have a fabulous weekend!
Playing and Learning in the Wild! 